Similarities Between Hassan And Amir In The Kite Runner

How long does it take for something to become unrecognizable? Amir’s return to Afghanistan after having lived in the United States for twenty-five years has been quite an emotional trip. Amir found out that Hassan’s son, named Sohrab, is still alive and living in an orphanage in Kabul. Amir and a man named Farid head to a soccer game in Kabul to find the man who bought him from the orphanage. There, they witness the Taliban murder two people. Amir meets the man and finds out that he is Assef and fights him in front of Sohrab, who stops the fight by firing at Assef with his slingshot. Amir and Sohrab escape, but Amir is left in horrific shape and is admitted to a hospital, where Farid gives him a letter left to him by Rahim Khan, and where

Farid goes to buy food for the two of them, and after eating, Amir notices that “there [is] one thing that [hasn’t] changed in Kabul after all: The kabob [is] as succulent and delicious as [he] remembered” (Hosseini 265). Baba, Amir and Hassan used to get kabob when Amir was a child. This is one thing he remembers that has not changed, one thing that he can hang on to. Later that night, Amir and Farid exchange old Afghan jokes that, according to Amir, there was not a single “Afghan in the world who didn’t know at least a few jokes about the bumbling mullah” (Hosseini 266). This is another similarity between Amir’s childhood in Afghanistan and Afghanistan in the present. Even Farid, who is from a different region knows these jokes, as he is the one who sparks up the conversation by telling one. Although the physical and political structures of Afghanistan are crumbling, its culture remains

Amir goes into the man’s house by himself and talks with him for a while before Sohrab comes in. Once he arrives, the man takes off the sunglasses to reveal bright blue eyes that Amir instantly recognizes as Assef’s. This realization sparks Amir having to finally face his past, there is no hiding it anymore. Assef tells Amir that they “have some unfinished business” (Hosseini 286), and he is referring to the time in the alley when Amir and Hassan were children and Hassan threatened to shoot Assef with his slingshot if he did not leave them alone. Assef ends up leaving Amir with extreme injuries and would have killed him if Sohrab had not interfered. Sohrab begs Assef to stop, and Assef threatens to kill him if he does not put down what is in his hand. “His hand was cocked above his shoulder, holding the cup of the slingshot at the end of the elastic band which was pulled all the way back” (Hosseini 291). Sohrab is mimicking the stand his father took to Assef so many years before, the reason he and Amir are fighting in the first place. Sohrab lets go of the slingshot and the brass ball inside the cup hits Assef in the left eye, tearing the eyeball out of the socket and becoming lodged inside. Thanks to Sohrab’s act almost identical to that of Hassan’s, he and Amir are able to